Understand (role of technology and individual using technology in society)

It is important to recognize the role that technology plays in our lives and the appropriate role students should have interacting with technology.

Most districts have some form of Acceptable Use Policy(AUP) and the policy from 15 years ago that was about treating the equipment in the school with respect now stretches to deal with copyright, images, social implications, social networking, and use of equipment.

I believe that students may be fully capable of turning on an using technology; however, unless they are taught then their actions can easily become unsafe or unethical. This is not a reason to ban any aspect of technology use in schools. This is the reason to teach them how technology is used safely by ethical citizens.

There are too many resources to even consider sharing here, but I will give a couple of starting points
Internet Safety
Check out my links in http://Del.icio.us/amboe_k/InternetSafety.
There are many sites dedicated to internet safety such as http://www.livewwwires.com/

Ethical Use
As citizens in Canada we are brought up with some ethical understanding of our cultural norms.
As teachers our challenge is to understand for ourselves the global ethical cultural norms as well as help students to internalize the mashup of national and global norms.

We must also understand as teachers the society that our students are living in. Here are some Canadian Stats to understand what our studnets have access to http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/research/YCWW/index.cfm

is a sample worksheet for looking at how technology and education have changed. I read recently that the chalkboard was the textbook and workbook, less than 100 years ago. It seems that we shifted to that technology, is it time to shift again?

Here is an example of how our world is different and open the discussion about how our students have changed and how we may need to change to reach our students.

As a Grade 7 teacher, I can only image what technologies will be available in 6 years. When our Grade 7 students graduate, the power to computer may have increased by 64 times. (Following the concept of doubling every year.) This means that what we teach students now will only have 1 to 2 % of relevance when they graduate. This highlights the extreme value of us not teaching “using technology”, rather building understanding of how to interact with technology and focusing on meeting our needs. Teaching students a software such as Inspiration is of little value in the long run; however, teaching them to think graphically will likely remain relevant.

Here are three videos that might provide a catalyst for change:
From 2007

and 2009
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8{/tube]
and updated in 2012